


Axels

by postcardsfromrussia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Speed Skating, figure skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:25:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardsfromrussia/pseuds/postcardsfromrussia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean had just meant to watch the competition and leave. He hadn't meant to get hooked on Polish speed skater Castiel Novak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Axels

**Author's Note:**

> This is on tumblr too - I'm huntinggrace :)

Most people root for Dean because he’s got the whole damn story to go with. Mother died when he was little, moving all around the country with nothing real to hold on to except the car and his skates. It makes for a great NBC fluff story, lots of repetitive interviews with Andrea Joyce (who Dean actually despises – you can’t get a word in edgewise without her jumping on it and making some awful comment), and in a sport like this, that’s all based on appearances, it gets you in good with the judges. Dean doesn’t so much like to think about this side of his sob story – he’s always been about fair play, and he doesn’t think he’s nearly as good as most anyone else competing – but it’s true. He has the skills, he has the dance, he knows how to sell a show, and he’s a crowd favorite. There’s not really anything holding him back at this point.

His competition isn’t for another two days, though, so he’s followed a bunch of the other American athletes to watch speed skating and root on Gabriel Ingel – who Dean’s never really met and who by all standards has no shot at medaling. But he guesses it’s better than sitting in his hotel room stressing and watching his commercials over and over again, so he follows. As an Olympian, he gets great seats – to avoid random people, he guesses. Isn’t sure. But they’re near the front.

Honestly Dean can barely understand what the Russian announcer is saying (he preferred Vancouver so much more), but he manages the basics. There are eight starting contestants – including Gabriel and a Polish favorite named Castiel who catches Dean’s eye straight off the bat – who are timed for a five hundred meter skate, and several other contestants who will follow to see who’ll end up with the best time. As far as Dean can tell, it’s only supposed to last about thirty seconds per person. 

He knows he’s supposed to be watching Gabe and rooting for him like Jo and everyone else around him, but he can’t seem to take his eyes off of Castiel Novak, the Polish man who finished fourth at last year’s World Championships and has clearly upped his game. He skates sinuously, carefully, and incredibly quickly. It’s fascinating to watch.

“Novak in first place straight off the bat,” says the announcer. “Ouardi right behind him, Ingel in third. This is going to be close –“ 

Here Dean doesn’t really understand the real point of an announcer if the race is so quick anyway. “But Novak’s clinched it,” the announcer continues. “And is that – I think it is! An Olympic and world record for Castiel Novak of Poland of just thirty three point three five seconds. Incredible!”

Dean watches Castiel take off his helmet and walk off the ice, and he’s quickly bombarded by paparazzi. He hasn’t officially won yet –after all, there are dozens of other skaters to follow – but either way, he’s made history, and a medal is almost certainly in his horizon.

Castiel has dark hair and, as Dean can see from his seat directly in front of the rink, shocking blue eyes. He’s incredibly attractive in a way Dean isn’t quite sure how to put into words (although, considering they’re in Sochi, he’ll have to keep that quiet for a bit), and he catches Dean’s eye and smiles for a second.

It’s always strange to look at someone after they’ve just won a gold medal. The first time Dean won his in 2009, he’d thought he’d be raving with joy, unable to stop smiling. Instead he was out of breath and just kept telling the interviewers how very proud of himself he was.

Castiel isn’t doing either of those things. Instead, although it’s perhaps unconscious, he’s staring at Dean.

**

Dean hasn’t been searching for Castiel – although he’s thought about it, just to congratulate him – but maybe the opposite has been true, because there he is, right in front of Dean. Even though they’re both professional athletes and should, as a rule, be more coordinated than this, Castiel bumps into Dean and nearly knocks him down – Castiel is a lot larger, although they have relatively similar amounts of muscle. 

“Sorry,” Castiel says, and it’s with less of an accent than Dean would have expected. “My fault.”

“It’s okay,” says Dean. “Hey, you’re Castiel, right? The speed skater?” He says this as if he doesn’t know exactly.

“Yes,” says Castiel, although he sounds exasperated at this point. “Really, there is no need for more congratulations.”

“I wasn’t going to,” says Dean, almost laughing. “Believe me, man, I know how you feel. It gets exhausting. Your English is fantastic, by the way. Never would have seen it coming.”

““It comes with travel,” Castiel tells him. “It’s difficult to give interviews without knowing how to speak. What are you competing in?”

“I’m a figure skater,” says Dean. “I know it sounds stupid, but think about it, dude. I’d like to see you try a triple axel on the ice.”

“I didn’t say it sounded stupid,” says Castiel, confused. “Figure skating is fascinating.”

“I’m competing tonight,” Dean says. “Short program. You going to drop by?”

“I’ll try to drop by.” The phrase sounds odd on Castiel’s tongue.

Dean grins. “It’d be great to see you. You’ll be rooting for me, right, not…some Polish guy?”

“I’m not sure.” Castiel frowns. “You can call me Cas, by the way. It’s easier, I think.”

“Okay, Cas,” says Dean, flashing him a brilliant smile. “Next time I see you, I’ll be halfway to having Olympic gold around my neck.”

Dean looks back more than once, just to see Cas’s eyes, which, each and every time, are fixed on his retreating body.

**

Dean’s least favorite thing to do is listen to the commentators. Rarely if ever do they know a damn thing that they’re talking about, which Dean finds ridiculous in the least and shameful in the most. After he completes the short program, which turns out fairly well by Dean’s standards but which everyone else is raving over, he would prefer to go back to the (less than five star) hotel and sleep for a while, but he has to sit in the booth and smile and wave and take interview after interview. He’s in second place after the short program, but that matters much less than the free dance and that’s what Dean is better at anyway. He got a little bit off balance after the triple axel and lost a little momentum, which he knows and everyone knows, but it’ll be better tomorrow. 

Silver would be pretty great too, he figures.

After he’s finally allowed to escape NBC and the rest of the cameras, the person he looks to find first is not Jo or Sam but Cas, who is waiting for him. 

“You looked beautiful out there,” says Cas. Dean isn’t sure if he means the dancing or Dean himself, but he’ll take the compliment from this man any day of the week.

“Thanks,” Dean says. “Not good enough, though. I haven’t won yet.”

“You’ll win tomorrow,” Cas says with certainly, and Dean laughs.

“I hope so, man. Hope so.”

Cas looks around, suddenly – and it takes Dean until after this happens to realize that he was looking to see if anyone was watching them – and then faces Dean directly. Again in hindsight, Dean knows he should have realized what was about to happen, but in reality it was cold and late and Cas’s eyes were so very blue. 

So when Cas goes on his tiptoes and kisses Dean full on the mouth (for luck, he whispers later), there’s not much that Dean can do besides kiss him back. 

**

Besides the irony that they’re in the middle of Sochi and Dean’s just kissed another man for the first time (although he’s now wondering why he didn’t do it before), Dean is surprisingly numb to the things he’s done with Cas. After they kissed, which they did for a very long while – and it was extraordinarily new and incredible to feel another man’s beard stubble against his own – Dean had gone back to his hotel, and watched himself skate on mute on the television, and fallen asleep. 

Now it’s early morning and it’s time for Dean to do his free dance even though he’s incredibly out of it. So much, in fact, that during the warmup he falls three times on his double toe – a comparatively simple skill for him – and hears the announcers murmuring about how is Dean Winchester off his game.

They all assume it’s because he’s in second place and made that mistake last night. Dean swallows the truth.

He’s sixth to go in today’s competition, right after Yuzuru Hanyu, the Japanese man in first place, who is apparently, according to the commentators, occasionally even more of a crowd favorite than Dean is due to his good looks and dazzling skills. It’s nothing if not a fair competition.

Dean makes it a point to not watch Hanyu’s routine or look at his score. He doesn’t necessarily want to know what he needs to win – he just wants to do his best. These are the things that take the pressure off of him.

But just in case he needed more pressure back onto him, there’s Cas in the crowd, who smiles at him and doesn’t seem to realize quite the impact that he’s had on Dean last night. It was a good impact, maybe – Dean hasn’t quite decided yet – but a stressful one.

But Dean is a figure skater, and part of what makes him such a good one is that he knows how to sell a routine. In the past he’s always sold it for his story, or his mother, or something or other that makes it worth watching.

Now, he skates for Cas.

**

“How does it feel to follow up Evan Lysacek in United States figure skating – and to win gold just like he did?” asks an interviewer who Dean knows he’s had before but who he can’t seem to remember the name of.

“It feels…really great,” says Dean to this lady, and just as quickly, turns to another. No one seems to take the dozens of stations into account.

“You had trouble getting your triple axel around yesterday,” another woman says. “Today, it was maybe the best we’ve ever seen it. What can you say about that?”

“I just worked on it really hard after I had a hard time yesterday,” says Dean. “With that and my double toe. It was just really out of the ordinary for me.”

He uses similar responses for the rest of the interviews – it’s not easy to be an Olympian, he figures out fairly quickly. Dean Winchester is the number one global trend on twitter, he gains thousands of followers by the minute. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to have a personal life again at this point.

By the time he escapes the paparazzi, he wonders if Cas will still be there to see him. 

He is. Of course he is. 

“I told you my kisses were luck,” he says. Dean laughs. He hadn’t known that he was planning on it, but now that he thinks about it, there really wasn’t another reason that he would have come to find Cas, was there?

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see you again,” he points out to Cas. 

“You will,” shrugs Cas. “People like you and I always seem to have ways of finding each other.” 

“I barely even know you,” Dean says. More arguments.

“You could,” Cas says. “Do you want to?”

“Yes,” Dean says, without a moment’s hesitation. Sometimes he wishes that he had hesitated before that confirmation. Most times he’s incredibly glad that he didn’t.

Cas, again, reaches up to Dean and kisses him hard on the mouth, his tongue easing against Dean, who moans soft and low and pushes against Cas. In an instant, Dean has decided that he certainly likes men just as much as he likes girls, if not more. But he guesses that it doesn’t really matter, because in an instant, he has decided he likes Cas.


End file.
